Poking through 14+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Focus on culture isn’t new, but it used to be a lot more positive. These days I see more about toxic cultures than about good ones, but what hasn’t changed is culture’s effect on performance, productivity and staffing. For better or worse, culture is still the most potent factor for any company.
Shawn Parr, whose company works with large corporations, such as Starbucks and MTV, on innovation wrote a meaty post called Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch.
It reminded me of something I wrote back in 2008, because the title is from a quote by Dick Clark, CEO of Merk and after rereading it I decided it’s worth reposting, so here it is.
Culture Trumps All
A post on Dave Brock’s blog led me to an article at IMD’s site called “An Unpopular Corporate Culture” and, as Dave said, it’s a must read for anyone who still thinks that corporate culture is some ephemeral concept with no real impact that consultants use to sell their services.
And a double-must for those who talk about culture’s importance, but don’t walk very well when it comes to creating a great corporate culture.
For those who prefer to put their faith in plans and strategy, hear the words of Dick Clark when he took over as CEO of Merck in 2005 and was asked about his strategy for restoring the pharmaceutical company to its former glory. “His strategy, he said, was to put strategy second and focus on changing the company’s insular, academic culture.” The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch,” Clark explained. “You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement it… the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy.””
If you’re looking for a best practice corporate culture silver bullet forget it—one size doesn’t fit all.
Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, describes that company’s top-down command and control culture of consistency and discipline as “the source of our competitive advantage,” and has made it a priority to reinforce it.
Meanwhile, Robert Iger and Steve Jobs, in their discussions about the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, have been concerned with avoiding an Exxon style command and control culture. Jobs says that, “Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn’t been about economics, it’s been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that’s the thing that’s going to determine the success here in the long run.””
It took Lou Gerstner a decade to remake IBM.
The key lesson Gerstner learned in his time with IBM, as he later reflected, was the importance of culture.”Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success—along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
The article is more than just additional proof for my favorite hobby horse.
The analysis of the role of employee complaints/negativity play in culture and the importance of what to keep when setting out to change a culture as opposed to what to jettison will give you new insight on your own company’s culture.
In case you still doubt the power and value of culture I hope that Dick Clark, Rex Tillerson, Robert Iger, Steve Jobs and Lou Gerstner combined with the articles in Fast Company and IMD have finally changed your mind.
Or founders who plan to walk their talk even after them become successful, unlike the “don’t be evil” guys.
More entrepreneurs are pursuing social or environmental goals, said Greg Brown, a professor of finance at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina.
Companies like Toms, Warby Parker and Uncommon Goods have pushed this concept into the mainstream by creating successful business models built around helping others. This trend has led to the rise of B Corporations, a certification for companies that meet high standards of social responsibility. The program started in 2007, and now more than 2,500 companies have been certified in more than 50 countries.
Not all these startups make it and many are choosing to do it sans investors who often start pushing for growth and revenue, social mission be dammed.
And they are slowly succeeding.
Companies like Moka are a reflection of how consumers think as well, Professor Brown said. As people’s wealth increases, they think more about quality and less about quantity. They also consider the social context of what they’re buying.
The “bracelet of silence” is not the first device invented by researchers to stuff up digital assistants’ ears. In 2018, two designers created Project Alias, an appendage that can be placed over a smart speaker to deafen it. But Ms. Zheng argues that a jammer should be portable to protect people as they move through different environments, given that you don’t always know where a microphone is lurking.
These may not be the solution, assuming there is one, but this definitely isn’t.
Rather than building individual defenses, Mr. Hartzog believes, we need policymakers to pass laws that more effectively guard our privacy and give us control over our data.
You have on to consider tech’s actions in Europe to know that laws don’t stop tech.
There’s another potential positive brewing in tech — actually a disruption of sorts.
As brilliant as young coders are, though, the industry can’t survive on technical chops alone. Last year, Harvard Business Review shared that the average age of a successful startup founder isn’t 25 or 30—it’s 45 years old.
Call it a miracle, but investors, the majority over 40, are starting to value the experience that comes with age.
Hopefully, in the long-run, the potential for success will outweigh the hang-up on age.
As a whole, entrepreneurial communities also need to do more to bring diverse groups to meet-ups, panels and speaking engagements. The importance of having more voices at the table can’t be diminished.
Algorithms actually do a lousy job of screening resumes and companies that rely on them miss a lot of great hires.
Why?
Because the only thing an algorithm can do is match key words and experience descriptions. Based on 13 years of tech recruiter experience I can tell you that rarely does anyone change jobs in order to do the same thing somewhere else, unless they hate their manager or the culture.
Not things that an algorithm is going to pick up on. Nor will the initial phone call usually made not by the hiring manager, but by someone who know little about the job other than to match the candidates responses to a list of “preferred” answers.
No discretionary knowledge based on the manager’s experience or the candidate’s potential.
We all know that management loves to save money and many of them feel that AI will allow them to reduce the most expensive item of their fixed costs, people — including managers.
Imagine an app giving you a quarterly evaluation—without a manager or HR rep in sight—and you have an idea of where this is potentially going.
What management forgets is that a company isn’t an entity at all. It’s a group of people, with shared values, all moving in the same direction, united in a shared vision and their efforts to reach a common goal.
It exists only as long as people are willing to join and are happy enough to stay — excessive turnover does not foster success.
So what do workers think about the use of AI/algorithms?
However, workers don’t necessarily like the idea of code taking over management functions—or hiring, for that matter. Pew research shows 57 percent of respondents think using algorithms for résumé screening is “unacceptable,” and 58 percent believe that bots taught by humans will always contain some bias. Nearly half (48 percent) of workers between the ages of 18 and 29 have some distrust of A.I. in hiring, showing that this negative perception isn’t going away anytime soon.
This is bad news for companies looking to “increase efficiency,” but great news for companies that recognize they aren’t hiring “resources” or “talent,” but people, with their infinite potential and inherent messiness.
A year later GE scrapped its notorious rank and yank review system as implemented by then-CEO Jack Welch. A year after that Amazon followed suit. There are still plenty of companies that use the system — whether they admit it or just change the name. Individual managers are also guilty of it no matter their company’s attitude. Be it company wide or individually the effect is the same — higher turnover, lower productivity, decreased engagement, and increasing recruiting costs.
Years ago I wrote about how to make annual reviews painless and effective — more a review of the year’s accomplishments and setting goals for the coming year than a critique of work past.
It worked because mini-reviews, coaching and conversations during the year were frequent.
Typical annual reviews were fraught with fear and loathing.
For decades, General Electric practiced (and proselytized) a rigid system, championed by then-CEO Jack Welch, of ranking employees. Formally known as the “vitality curve” but frequently called “rank and yank,” the system hinged on the annual performance review, and boiled the employees’ performance down to a number on which they were judged and ranked against peers. A bottom percentage (10% in GE’s case) of underperformers were then fired.
Jack Welch championed a lot of very bad stuff (e.g., work/life balance, HR), but the negativity of rank and yank is near the top, if not number one.
(As for GE’s stellar results keep under Welch keep in mind that businesses like GE Financial practically printed money until it all blew up.)
But times are changing.
According to Raghu Krishnamoorthy, the longtime GE exec in charge of Crotonville (GE’s in-house management school) “Command and control is what Jack was famous for. Now it’s about connection and inspiration.”
And to that end, GE has developed a new in-house app that basically does what I and others evangelized a decade and more ago.
The new app is called “PD@GE” for “performance development at GE” There’s an emphasis on coaching throughout, and the tone is unrelentingly positive. The app forces users to categorize feedback in one of two forms: To continue doing something, or to consider changing something.
If you don’t have the luxury of an app you can simplify it even further.
Care about your people.
Interact with your people.
Talk with your people.
Challenge your people.
Help them grow and advance — even when that means they leave for a better opportunity that you can’t provide.
Read what GE is doing and adapt it to your own group — whether your company does of not.
Does that mean the employee can expect a positive outcome if they have the courage to report their boss, another executive or a customer for harassment?
Then there are the companies looking for passionate workers.
Lisa Cohen, an associate professor of organizational behavior at McGill University’s Desautels School of Management shared that passion is a common attribute that companies she’s spoken with want, but they struggle to explain why.
“They haven’t defined the term,” she said. “They don’t know why it matters and probably what they’re looking for—and they’ll put this in not particularly nice terms—is somebody who’s going to work like crazy for long hours, right?”
Hiring for intangibles is smart, but it should be for traits that actually matter, as opposed to smoke and glitter.
Last week we saw how the best places to work rankings change — Google was number one for six straight years, now it’s number eight, while Facebook dropped to seventh place.
People change too. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was named the world’s most reputable CEO in 2018, didn’t even make the top 10 this year.
Friends and family often aren’t aware of the most current news about a company and even when they are they may minimize it, especially if the company is hot or an icon.
This isn’t just about Google; Facebook, Amazon or dozens of others that are just as problematical.
Hot startups encourage you to jump in without due diligence. WeWork may seem like an extreme example, but it’s not as uncommon as you might think — remember Theranos, Uber and Zenefits.
It’s about how fast things change, both the big stuff and the little stuff, all the stuff that underlies culture and trust, which can and should affect your decisions.
Because it’s your career, your life and, corny as it may sound, your soul.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Knowing, understanding and accepting yourself is critical to major decisions, such as choosing a spouse/life partner/job. Ignoring or distorting any of the first three practically guarantees blowing the last three. As does ignoring or distorting the info gathered from your due diligence on the last three.
There’s a very stupid myth that only the very talented are hired by startups and that the very talented only want to work for startups.
The corollary being that those who work for public companies, let alone large ones, probably aren’t all that talented and certainly not innovative/creative.
What a crock.
Another part of that myth is that working for a startup is the road to riches.
An even bigger crock.
The myth also says that the best place to work is a unicorn, such as or AirBnB, GitHub or Palantir,
And that is the biggest crock of all.
If you are looking for new opportunities and are dazzled by the idea of working at a unicorn I strongly suggest you read Scott Belsky’s post on Medium.
A company’s fate is ultimately determined by its people, so talent is everything. But this old adage bumps up against another one: cash is king (or runway is king, for a fast-growing private company). Without runway, talent takes off. So, it is no surprise that bold moves to extend runway (think late-stage financings at technically large valuations with some tricky liquidation preferences underneath) are done even if they could hurt the company (and its people) in the long run. This is especially true when these financings are ego-driven rather than strategic. The problem is, the employees at these companies don’t understand the implications.
This is a short write-up on things that I wish I’d known and considered before joining a private company (aka startup, aka unicorn in some cases). I’m not trying to make the case that you should never join a private company, but the power imbalance between founder and employee is extreme, and that potential candidates would do well to consider alternatives.
The right place for you to work is the one that satisfies what you want — whether that’s the opportunity to work on bleeding edge technology, build a network, upgrade your resume or even plain, old curiosity.
The wrong place is the one you join with an eye to getting rich quick or for bragging rights.
Next Monday’s Oldie is about what to look for when choosing a place to work, with a special caution for unicorns.
Today I thought we’d take a quick look at a “great place to work” myth.
Google topped the best places to work lists for years, but no more.
According to the 2019 Glassdoor survey Google is in 8th place based on 9186 reviews.
Last year 20,000 people walked out in protest over the handling of sexual harassment accusations and Google promised to do better.
But almost a year after the historic walkout, a dozen current and former Google employees told Recode that many employees are still justifiably afraid to report workplace issues because they fear retaliation. They say the company continues to conceal rather than confront issues ranging from sexual harassment to security concerns, especially when the problems involve high-ranking managers or high-stakes projects. …dozens more employees say that when they filed complaints with Google’s human resources department, they were retaliated against by being demoted, pushed out, or placed on less desirable projects.
… Google’s top-down culture that suppresses meaningful employee pushback — even in areas the company says it’s trying to improve on, like diversity.
To really find out about a company you need to do the same depth of due diligence on it that the company does on you.
That requires more than reading employee reviews; it means searching traditional media as well as proven new media.
Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
It’s said that money is the root of all evil, but there are plenty of evil people with no money and lots of wealthy people who do enormous good. I think it’s more accurate to say that greed is the root, since people will do anything to satisfy it. And often, what they do is perfectly legal — but legal doesn’t mean either ethical or moral.
I’m no happier about the AIG and other bonuses paid to screwed up Wall Street banks, but I’m not sure why any of us are surprised.
“In the largest 25 corporate bankruptcies between 1999 and 2002, while hundreds of billions of dollars of investor wealth and over 100,000 jobs disappeared, the Financial Times found the “barons of bankruptcy” made off with $3.3 billion.”
Giant compensation packages, guaranteed bonuses and platinum parachutes are excused by Boards and executives as necessary to attract the “best and brightest,” but here’s what’s really going on.
The ‘names’ demand outsize compensation/stock options/guaranteed bonus/etc. in order to validate their ‘brand’.
Those responsible for hiring not only meet the demands, but even exceed them in an effort to attain or sustain the company’s reputation as a better home for ‘stars’ — the more stars you have the greater the bragging rights — mine’s bigger than yours in high school locker room talk.
Now let’s consider the folly of this attitude.
Those hiring often seek a name brand in the mistaken belief that the brand comes with a warranty that guarantees good results.
But no matter who you hire you’re actually paying for their past performance, which is always influenced by
circumstances—boss and company positioning in its market and industry
environment—culture and colleagues;
and let us not forget that minor factor
the economy.
The hiring mindset is that everything the brand accomplished was done in a total vacuum and dependent only on the brand’s own actions, therefore changing every single surrounding factor will have no impact on performance.
Put like that it sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it.
This is one of the prime reasons that so many CEOs bring their ‘own team’ over when they move, as do managers all the way down the food chain—they know they didn’t do it alone.
CEOs aren’t like movie and rock stars whose very names draw consumers into spending money—nobody ever bought a product from GE because Jack Welch was CEO, nor do they carry Jobs iPods—so why pay them that way?
Moreover, assuming that performance occurring during an expansion is a valid yardstick for performance in general, let alone a downturn, is sheer idiocy.
You have only to remember the difficulties faced by people whose management skills were honed between 1991 and 2000, the longest expansion in our history. When the recession hit in March of 2001 they had no experience whatsoever of how to drive revenue or manage in a down economy.
That recession and the previous one in 1990 lasted only 8 months each. The longest recession we’ve had was 2 years, January-July 1980 and July 1981-November 1982, and that one had a 12 month break in it. This means there are a very small number of managers with any actual experience managing in anything even close to what’s happening now.
The current recession officially started in December 2007, so it’s already 15 months old and the end isn’t in sight.
What experience makes these folks the ‘best and brightest’ for today’s world?
Just why the hell are companies still guaranteeing oversized compensation and exorbitant exit packages when now is definitely the time to pay for future performance—no guarantees.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
